PipfordSep 11, 2024

"Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars"

It's great to see someone FINALLY mention the magnetosphere issue, in the very first sentence no less, but this article rips into the idea so much more thoroughly than that, and with admirable gusto.

#skeptic #musk #mars

https://defector.com/neither-elon-musk-nor-anybody-else-will-ever-colonize-mars

Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars | Defector

Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars’s dead core? No? Well. It’s fine. I’m sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan…

Show threadAngle🖇
@anandamide Didn't even mention the gravity issue: Humans are very much adapted to earths 1G gravity. Mars has, like, 0.38 G gravity. And it's not just a matter of muscles, or even bones - your veins are calibrated to the pressure exerted by your blood being appropriate for a world with 1G gravity, and without it they degrade in all sorts of horrible ways. :/
Sep 12, 2024 at 3:45amWeb
Show threadAngle🖇Sep 12, 2024
@anandamide So, you want to live on Mars, even with space suits and life support, you need to fundamentally re-engineer the human body to an absolutely terrifying degree. And in order to do that in any reasonable degree, you need AGI. And if we're positing AGI, well, we're so far off from the reality we're familiar with, it's barely even worth talking bout from a scientific perspective - you might as well just start drawing cool pictures...
Show threadAngle🖇Sep 12, 2024
@anandamide Which isn't to say that it won't happen! Just that it will be so disruptive, it's nigh impossible to predict what comes afterwards.
Show threadferricoxideSep 16, 2024
@Angle @anandamide

Part of why the scifi trope of a galaxy-spanning future for humanity is so laughable: anyone that's truly adapted to life-not-on-Earth seems unlikely to be something that you'd continue to be able to call "human".